When I used to create xml web services before, Visual Studio created a SOAP interface where any HTTP/XML based client could consume it. From what I heard from a colleague, Microsoft moved away from this standard and created their own standard. At this point, I am leaning toward writing an asmx web service application (because of the ramp up time to learn WCF) and was wondering if other platform applications (java or other based) will be able to consume them.
Any light you could shed on this for me would be appreciated.
EDIT: For clarification, I am using ASMX web services, and not WCF.
Depending on you WCF endpoint binding (wsHttpContextBinding, for instance), you can keep that SOAP format to exchange messages with .NET services. No "new standards" were created this time. =)
You can check this article for more information about WCF Interoperability
Related
I have searched a lot upon internet but still i didn't get the clear difference between web services and web APIs? Somewhere I read that all web services are API's but all API' are not web services. How?
What all I know is both allow to utilize the functionality of other applications.Can someone describe me clear difference?
I have been on the same journey to learn the differnce between Web API (not JUST API) vs Web Services.
First, we know for a fact that both use the Web as the communication tool as stated by #Kris.
While looking at these 2 videos, both serve as the "middleman" (the waiter in the restaurant) for a client to ask a Web Server to process and deliver a response.
Web Service (From 0:35)
API (In general) (From 1:12)
When I was looking for an actual differnce between the two, usually most articles and videos go on an unrelated comparison between "Web Services vs API" as they exclude the "Web" out of "Web API".
See this article, for example, which contains the title "Web API Vs Web Service...." yet, contain sub-titles like:
"Differences of API vs Web Service"
"Pros and Cons of Web Services vs API Service"
"Web Service vs API: Fueling Both With Scraping Robot’s API"
The only difference I could find is if we were to discuss this in .NET context.
Here's a question post related to this.
To sum it up, Web Services are used in the SOAP protocal while Web API is usually created in the RESTful way. The more detailed answers are in the post but ultimatelly do not answer the main question that is asked.
Conclusion: The question raised in the public domanin has no clear definition to what is difference between the two, thus the 2 terms are ,for the most part,
interchangeable
All web services are APIs. An API is an Application Programming Interface. But there are offline APIs, which are not web services. There are APIs for all things from Office to Websites. The API is just a defined interface to be able to control/communicate with some software. Web Services just provide that means of connecting over the web.
There is more to discuss when you are talking about APIs which are communication protocols and data formats, but you get the basic idea.
An API (Application Program Interface) is the interface through which another program can communicate with a program.
A web service in this context is one of those programs with an API. 'Web' means that it is accessible via the web, mostly via HTTP. A service usually has a well defined purpose.
For instance a date web service's purpose could be to provide the current date. The API of my service would have a single 'endpoint': get the date. The service then implements this API. It somehow retrieves the date and sends it back.
What does a Web service really mean ? I am not looking for a theoretical explanation, I am looking for something practical.
I was thinking that anything I can call from an external client is a Web service, so a basic PHP which returns JSON data could be a Web service.
But then I started reading about Web services in W3Schools.org and I got confused. If the PHP URL which returns JSON data is a web service, why would I need to do SOAP, WDSL etc ... to create a Web service. Isn't it extra work?
Also, if SOAP is the way data is sent back and forth, what about other transport types?
What differentiates a RESTful Web service from a SOAP based web service?
When you are talking about a webservice people generally misunderstand what it means, a webservice is simply a way to interact between a and b that abstracts the use of local technology standards. A WSDL defines the way in which the SOAP message is being sent over the channel. REST uses JSON over HTTP, WSDL uses SOAP over HTTP.
The advantage of a webservice is, say you develop one piece of code in .net and you wish to use JAVA to consume this code. You can interact directly with the abstracted layer and are unaware of what technology was used to develop the code.
SOA is a set of design paradigms and standards that tell you how to develop your services, in SOA each service is meant to comply with the principles listed below. WSDL is generally linked with but not essential for a SOA solution. If you wish to learn about SOA google "Thomas Erl SOA".
Priciples of SOA
Standardized service contract
Service loose coupling
Service abstraction
Service reusability
Service autonomy
Service statelessness
Service discoverability
Service composability
This Q&A Restful vs Other Web Services brings a lot of light to what is a webserver, and differences from SOAP and REST. Id recommend to read all the answers (many of them are very good).
I need to develop Webservice Application for our Client .
I dont know anything about WSDL4J
From the net I found this
"The Web Services Description Language for Java Toolkit (WSDL4J) allows the creation, representation, and manipulation of WSDL documents.
Is the reference implementation for JSR110 'JWSDL' (jcp.org)."
But anybody please tell me why should we use WSDL for developing webservices?
Is there any specific advantage we will get?
And can anybody please point me a link where to start for working with WSDL4j?
You actually need not to use wsdl4j for developing web services or clients for web services. There are other SOAP stacks developed on top of that. Axis2 is such an open source SOAP stack..
WSDL2Java tool that comes with Axis2 - which been used to generate client side stubs from a given WSDL. uses wsdl4j internally..
It's my understanding SharePoint 2010 has introduced a new JavaScript API, a brand new assembly for Silverlight clients, but does anybody know if there will be still support for good old Web Service Access?
By old services, I am referring to the old interface
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd878586.aspx
Yes SharePoint 2010 still has web services. Review this MSDN section for more information.
Essentially the new API's are there to help client side code run interesting code without having to use the Web Services. If you have ever tried utilising a webservice from Javascript you can understand the pain the new API's are trying to prevent.
The Web services are still supported. However, the data-retrieval oriented Web services should be considered semi-deprecated. Going forward, you shoul use either the client object model or ADO.NET Data Services to get data from a client.
I've been trying to figure out how to administrate the whole thing with whatever APIs are available. The MSDN documentation seems like what I need, except I feel stupid and can't find where those APIs are on my server. There are no URLs to be seen in the documentation. Am I blind?
I ask this question in anticipation as part of a project. I have experience of developing and consuming web services in the past and am au fait with those. However I have been told that as part of this next project I will need to use "secure" web services. Can you provide some insight into what additional development tasks there will be to implement these as opposed to standard dare i say it insecure web services?
Cheers
Unless you have a complex multi-hop scenario, then SSL is vastly more practical and interoperable than anything based on WS-Security or related specification
If your going to be using WCF, check out these guide lines on MSDN
Exising ASMX Web Service can be secured using Web Services Enhancements (WSE) 3.0